Christian Harder Soars to First-Ever PokerStars Championship Title

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Posted by
PokerRoomsOnline
on January 16, 2017

A familiar face has won the first-ever PokerStars Championship Bahamas.

Formerly known as the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, the annual stop at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas has been a staple of the poker tour for over a decade and part of the European Poker Tour for most of it.

Now rebranded under the new PokerStars Championship umbrella, the event still drew the true elite of the online and live poker worlds and one of them, Christian Harder, claimed the first-ever Main Event title on Saturday.

Coming full circle in his poker career, Harder won $429,664 for the title in the exact same locale he played his first-ever live tournament back in 2008.

Backer Meets Prodigy

Harder, known as charder online, was just a young upstart back in 2008 playing his first big live event at the PCA. When he finished 7th for $200,000, he made his backer - Cliff "JohnnyBax" Josephy - a tidy profit.

Fast forward to this past weekend and it was Harder and Josephy heads-up for the crown. The two agreed to a deal that paid them each over $400k and left $10,000 to play for.

Harder finished Josephy off - himself having a pretty great year after making the WSOP Main Event November Nine in 2016 - quickly to claim the first-ever PSC Bahamas title.

The 738 players was quite a drop in the field since the real heydays of the PCA in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Over 1,500 players took part in several PCA main events and Poorya Nazari claimed $3m for the title back in 2009.

Kenney Continues to Crush in Bahamas

Another of the group of online grinders to really take over the live scene over the past decade is New Yorker Bryn Kenney. The brash, aggressive player has always felt comfortable playing amongst his peers in the Bahahas and it shows in his results.

Kenney has a dozen cashes over the years in the Bahamas, primarily in High Roller and Super High Roller events. All told he's earned over $5m in the Caribbean and that didn't slow down this week.

Kenney cashed six times in 2017, five of those in High Roller Events. He won two events and finished 24n, 4th, 7th and 9th in the others to claim over $1.7m in cashes.

That pushes Kenney's career live earnings up over $13.6m and places him 14th on the overall money list for American players.